Dhaka – Popular science fiction writer Muhammad Zafar Iqbal was being brought to Dhaka Combined Military Hospital after he sustained injures after an assailant attempted on his life in northern Sylhet, officials said on Saturday.

An Air Force helicopter was assigned to transport the writer to Dhaka after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina ordered improved treatment for Iqbal, who sustained injuries on his head, hand and back.

The assailant might have hit Iqbal, 65,a professor of the Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, on his head by rod and stabbed on his back and hand, said Brigadier General Mahbubul Haque, head of the hospital.

The identity of the assailant was not available after he was caught red handed, but he was taken to the custody of the security forces for interrogation.

The thin bearded-man, aged between 23 and 26, attacked Iqbal, also a physicist, from the rear as he was climbing to the podium of a science festival to address the students in the afternoon.

Students rushed the professor to Osmani Medical College Hospital in Sylhet, where the physicians said Iqbal was “out of danger”.

Several hundred students, both in Sylhet in the capital Dhaka, burst into demonstrations as the news broke out that the science writer was knifed on his campus.

They demanded investigation and finding the real criminal behind the attack as Iqbal was earlier threatened by the Islamist militants.

Zahir Uddin, proctor of the university said, the motive of the attack could not be known immediately.

Television footage show, students and well wishers gathered at the gates of the medical college hospital after the came to know about the attacks.